


Mates of the garden lie scentless and dead.

by Buttercup_ghost



Category: RWBY
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Analysis, Character Study, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Depression, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I wrote this when panicking so idk how good it is, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Stream of Consciousness, i guess idk, if u squint there's some white rose and maybe even nuts and dolts, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-29 07:50:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12626454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buttercup_ghost/pseuds/Buttercup_ghost
Summary: All her lovely companionsAre faded and gone;No flower of her kindred,No rosebud is nigh,To reflect back her blushes,Or give sigh for sigh.





	Mates of the garden lie scentless and dead.

Ruby, Ruby, Ruby. She wonders why her mom named her that. Red.

Everything around her was red.

Roses. Blood.

There was so much blood.

( _Thus I kindly scatter,_ her grave says, and it feels more of a mockery.)

(Did she know how that poem ended?)

 

 

Her dull, bitten down nails tries to dig into her flesh, tries to create crescent indents and spill red, red, red,

like her cloak, like her name,

like _her mother_ _laying in the snow, red, red, red,_ _flowin_ g _out-_

Her hand tightens even more, because enough force could make even a dull weapon cut through the greatest of foes, and Ruby has always been her biggest enemy.

No, no, she shakes her head. She's a leader. She can't think like that. Not here, not now.

She's failed too many times, (Her mom. Penny. Pyrrha.) already, despite the fact that she knows she shouldn't.

She always fails, in the end, though. When it counts, she doesn't come through. She's never enough, never good enough.

She's a failure.

( _youcan'taffordtoeafailurenowyou'r_ _ealeaderyou'realeaderyou'realeader_ _ ~~jaune~~ ruby_)

 

 

  
Ruby wondered who she was, sometimes.

She read it once, high on her uncle's book shelf she was not supposed to reach. She had tried standing on her tippy toes, at first, but couldn't reach. Her attempts ended up tipping the bookcase, everything falling on her in a heap, to heavy, before her moving form made them scatter.

She got the book, in the end, with its sketch drawn pictures and cursive lettering, but everything fell in the process, laying like rubble near her feet.

(The book said; _and death shall come with a scythe in hand, their signature weapon gleaming.)_

(Crescent rose burns when she holds it for the next week.)

 

Her nails were kept short for training, for fighting. Long nails would get in the way of her iron hold, so she doesn't allow them to get longer than she can afford them to be. She remembers when her team, her first team, was together, not torn apart by the hardships of sea, the wind. She wasn't cut out for sailing, in the end. But before the shipwreck, Weiss would sit and trim her nails, scolding her for letting them get so long (just long enough to dig, _dig into her hands--)_. Ruby would smile, and laugh, playing it off as she listened to Weiss bickering. It was calm, almost, then.

Now, though, her nails are caked in dirt, cracked and chipped at the edges. She doesn't have a nail clipper, nor does she have Weiss, only nature chipping down her fingernails and her own teeth, biting them off until it hurts.

One time, sometimes past midnight, she was sure, when her dreams (Pyrrha, mom, penny–) woke her up in the night, not unusual, she bite them in the dark.

The fire had died ( _yang_ , her minds thinks) only cinders ( _cinder_ , approaching _pyrrha, her hand out_ _stretched_ _before_ -) remaining to light her way.

She bite her nails until they bleed, until the flesh got caught between her teeth, until the nails separated, until she could hardly breathe.

She doesn't swallow the nails, only grinds them to pieces, teeth clenching, before spitting the dust onto the ground.

Everything turns to dust.

(Pyrrha taught her that one.)

 

They didn't have funerals. Of course they didn't, the city was in chaos, still recovering from the attack. But it stung. There was a vigil held, she knew, but she didn't go. It wouldn't be the same. Ruby had tried setting up a private one, but none of the funeral homes would do it, even the ones that weren't destroyed, or over crowded, in the fall out. There was nothing left of Pyrrha to bury, scattered to the wind. They wouldn't hold a funeral for nothing. They wouldn't even hold penny one.

She was a robot, they said.

She wasn't dead, because she was never alive.

Ruby cursed them out each time she left, the bell on the door ringing after her.

 

  
“Little red, little red,” she remembers him taunting, “here to be gobbled up by the wolves.”

Torchwick dies in front of her, right as he proclaims he will survive. Swallowed whole, as he said she would be. It's so ironic, she almost wants to laugh. She almost feels guilty.

(She can't even stop the villains from dying, one by one, in front of her.)

(“The grim don't care what side you're on, torchwick.”)

She is little red riding hood, being gobbled up by the wolves, but always saved, always freed—each wolf gutted, but not by her hand.

She wants to be the huntsmen.

The cloak around her burns. It's red, like mom's blood. She clings to it.

(The only wolf here is herself. Self destruction is an art form she indulges in everyday, wearing it like a badge, hiding in plain sight.)

(She guts herself to be rid of the evil in her—because there has to be evil, _right?_ Why else would this be happening? What did she do wrong? _What did she do wrong?_ —She is her own savior, and her own destroyer.)

 

Ruby's friends are scattered, or dead. Her garden is gone. It's cruel irony, in a way, that her life is playing out like her mother's poem.

The nightmares haunt her in the day. Long gone voices, so clear, until they distort. She wishes she could hear them again. She wishes that they were still alive. She wishes she saved them.

(Ruby was never a hero, no matter how much she wanted to be one.)

She wondered if anyone would miss her, if she died. She wonders if it should have been her, instead of them. Would anyone mourn when she was gone?

Or— here's a morbid thought, would, by then, all her loved ones be dead?

She shakes, a sob coming out of her clutched hands covering her mouth.

(If anyone hears her, they're too lost in their own demons to care.)

 

  
When jaune finds her bleeding, nails peeled off and marks on her arm, (dull weapons _dull weapons_ –) all she can do is laugh.

(Roses have thorns. Her mom did, and so does she.)

(A dead garden surrounds her.)

(The petals scatter once more.)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "The last rose of Summer", the poem that the line "thus I kindly scatter," comes from, the line on summer roses grave.


End file.
